What is auction sniping?

Tue Dec 11

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5 min read

Auction sniping is a strategy of bidding and is nearly as old as online auctions themselves. It implies that placing your bid at the very end of the auction is your best chance of winning the item. Sounds logical as you don’t leave any reasonable time to your fellow bidders to analyze what has happened and decide whether they are willing to increase their bid or not. Sniping really took off at the beginning of the early 2000s and as it became a more and more popular approach, question about its efficiency became more and more frequent. It was just a matter of time before some serious people took the matter into their hands and started studying the subject. Economists Alvin E. Roth and Axel Ockenfels were up to the challenge. They researched the issue by gathering auction data from eBay and Amazon, studying bidder behavior as well as efficient time for bidding. To no big surprise, studies showed that placing your bid at the very last seconds of an auction indeed increases your chances of getting the item. Statistics for a couple of eBay categories speak for themselves:

More similar studies have been conducted in the following years and all of them reveal the same results – closer you bid to the end of the auction more chances you have to win it – more than 50% to be precise. Well, experts agree that it’s your best shot of winning an online auction. Although, it takes one to have quite a patience and good timing. That’s why we created iSnipe, an automated auction sniper that will bid during the last seconds of the auction on your behalf. You just link the item, choose the price you’re willing to pay and iSnipe will take care of the rest. As simple, as that!